— John Spencer (@SpencerGuard) August 24, 2025
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From the article – Stop Leaving Egypt Out of the Conversation on Gaza’s Humanitarian Crisis:
Last week the UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification system declared famine conditions in parts of northern Gaza. The declaration altered normal IPC standards by relying on projections rather than verified evidence such as daily death counts from malnutrition or updated reporting on hunger mortality. No data was presented on the number of people dying per day from starvation, nor was there acknowledgment that aid deliveries into Gaza have increased significantly over the past two weeks. The announcement generated headlines worldwide but departed from the empirical baseline normally required to label a famine.
Amid this humanitarian debate, Egypt remains absent from serious discussion of solutions. Egypt is a signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention, the 1967 Protocol which expanded asylum protections worldwide by removing the original convention’s geographic and time limitations, and the 1969 OAU Convention Governing the Specific Aspects of Refugee Problems in Africa. Despite these commitments, Cairo has repeatedly refused to open its border to displaced Gazans. After the October 7 attacks and the outbreak of war, Egypt reinforced its position by deploying an armored brigade and tens of thousands of troops to northern Sinai, erecting new border fortifications, and constructing a massive wall near Rafah to ensure no civilians could escape from the war zone inside Gaza. These measures show that Egypt’s current explanations came after its decision to physically seal the border.
As ever, Egypt is more concerned with using Palestinians as pawns in its cold war against Israel than in actually doing anything to help them.
Egypt’s decision to militarize its border, construct new barriers, and block every avenue of escape reflects its national calculations. Yet those calculations should not be accepted uncritically. The lessons of Ukraine, Syria, and Yemen are clear: mass displacement must be managed through regional and international cooperation, not sealed borders. Egypt may claim to be protecting the Palestinian cause, but in practice it has trapped civilians inside a war zone. The world should stop excusing this ahistorical position and begin demanding concrete humanitarian solutions that save lives without undermining eventual Palestinian return. With the United Nations General Assembly convening in September, Egypt can no longer be allowed to remain absent from this conversation and certainly not continue to block humanitarian options. The UN should make it a priority to debate and act on the creation of an internationally monitored humanitarian zone in the Sinai desert so that civilians have a genuine avenue for safety until the war ends.
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